A few years ago I posted a video interview with renowned heart surgeon Dr. Lloyd Rudy, in which he told of an experience he had with a patient who died on the table, had an NDE, and once resuscitated was able to describe to Dr. Rudy details of the operating theatre – which he had seen during his out-of-body experience – that he should not have known based on his state at the time (general anaesthetic, eyes taped shut, and then ‘dead’).

I wrote about this case in my book Stop Worrying! There Probably is an Afterlife (paperback version here), along with a number of other ‘veridical NDEs’ – that is, those cases where the person who died was able to accurately describe scenes in the operating room, and elsewhere, when their physical state should not have allowed them to do so. So I was very interested to hear that the NDE case recounted by Dr. Lloyd Rudy (see below) – who sadly passed away himself not too long after the video interview – has been more recently been verified by his assistant during the surgery, Dr. Roberto Amadao-Cattaneo.

In January 2013 Dr. Amado-Cattaneo commented on the YouTube interview, stating that “Everything that Dr. Lloyd Rudy explained in this video is absolutely true. I was there with him doing this surgery. The patient fully recovered and what he said to us after the surgery is what he experienced”. When brought to the attention of NDE researchers Titus Rivas and Rudolf Smit, they contacted him to ask for more details about the case, and they have recently shared their discussion in the latest issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies:

This case happened some time late 1990s early 2000s… I did witness the entire case and everything that my partner Dr. Rudy explained in the video. I do not have a rational scientific explanation to explain this phenomenon. I do know that this happened. This patient had close to 20 minutes or more of no life, no physiologic life, no heart beat, no blood pressure, no respiratory function whatsoever and then he came back to life and told us what you heard on the video. He recovered fully.

…This was not a hoax, no way, this was as real as it gets. We were
absolutely shocked that he would come back after 20 or more minutes,
we had pronounced him dead on the operating room table and told the
wife that he had died.

…we thought all along his description was quite accurate regarding things he said he saw or heard. Patients’ eyes are always shut during surgery, most of the time they are taped so they do not open since this can cause injury to the corneas.

To read the full account, get a hold of the latest Journal of Near-Death Studies (copies can be purchased from that link – and be sure to sign up as a member of IANDS, International Association for Near-Death Studies, to receive future issues). The article is in JNDS 31:3, “A Near-Death Experience with Veridical Perception Described by a Famous Heart Surgeon and Confirmed by his Assistant Surgeon”, by Titus Rivas, M.A., M.Sc., and Rudolf H. Smit.

There isn’t just oneThere isn’t just one afterlife – there are an infinite number. The implications for we the living are vast. For one thing it means we don’t really “die.” Therefore our life is part of a continuum – there isn’t a beginning or an end. When we “get on with the business of living” we are doing something that does not end. It is not something we can abandon even if we want to. We are stuck with living forever no matter what.